Saturday, November 16, 2013

Tapping into that small-town connection

I'M NOT ABOUT to take back
all the terrible things I’ve said about TVNZ, but credit where credit’s due.

This Town,
which TV One has been screening in prime time on Saturday nights for the past
few weeks, is a priceless series about ordinary New Zealanders.

Actually, that’s not quite
correct. Many of them are extraordinary: eccentric, clever and colourful. But
they are ordinary in the sense that they are not big names (with one exception:
Lynda Topp of the Topp Twins, but even she was shown in a new light).

You won’t see any of them in
the social pages of the Sunday Star-Times.
What’s more, there are no attention-seeking presenters hogging the camera. This Town is a celebrity-free zone, and
all the better for it. It’s also mercifully free of the irritating production
gimmickry that intrudes on so many shows.

If you haven’t seen the
programme so far, you’ve missed some great New Zealanders. Most of them have a
passion for something (a greatly overused term these days, but applicable in
this case), like the Otago family that built its own power station, the man who
restored the moribund Wairoa movie theatre and the Kaponga (Taranaki) woman who
turned her house into a horse museum.

One appealing aspect of the
show is seeing Kiwi blokes – even the hard men who inhabit the Chatham Islands
– speaking honestly and unselfconsciously about their lives and what’s
important to them.

I especially enjoyed the episode
that featured the Patea Maori Club, famous for its 1984 hit Poi E. Drive through Patea these days
and it’s easy to get the impression it’s a town that has lost all hope, but not
so. Patea still has a beating heart, as the stalwarts of the PMC showed.

Producer Melanie Rakena has done
a superb job seeking out engaging characters with interesting stories and
allowing them to tell them in their own way. The series takes me back to the
days of Gary McCormick’s Heartland,
which had a similar knack for unearthing unconventional but likeable people in
out of the way places.

Many of us still identify with
small-town New Zealand, though the number must be diminishing. For one hour on
Saturday night, This Town taps into that
emotional connection.

Perhaps the key to its appeal
is that makes you feel good about being a New Zealander – which is not
something that could be said for programmes like Police Ten 7 (or, come to that, Seven
Sharp, which seems based on the assumption that we’re a nation of airheads).

* * *

ON SUNDAY morning I listened
to Radio Zealand host Chris Laidlaw talking to Bryan Gould, a retired New
Zealand academic who was once a British Labour MP and contender for the
leadership of the British Labour Party.

It wasn’t so much an
interview as a meeting of minds. Mr Gould was holding forth on his favourite
theme, the wickedness of free-market capitalism, and it became clear as the
interview progressed that the two former Rhodes Scholars were kindred souls.

By the end, Laidlaw was
murmuring in agreement and lamenting that the spirit of egalitarianism on which
New Zealand was founded had been “sold down the river”. Hardtalk it wasn’t.

Laidlaw may not regard
himself as being on the left, as he told this paper on Wednesday, but regular
listeners will have formed their own conclusions about his leanings long ago.

Now it has been announced that
he’s leaving the programme at the end of the year. He says it’s because he
wants to devote his time to his local government work, but some will wonder
whether Radio New Zealand, which has a new chief executive, has decided the
Sunday morning programme can no longer ignore the charter requirement that it
be editorially balanced.

If so, it’s not before time. Laidlaw
is entitled to his political views, but the state broadcaster exists for, and
is funded by, all New Zealanders – not just a cosy, left-leaning elite.* * *

SHARIA LAW proponents
advocate cutting off the hands as a penalty for theft, but the idea also has
merit as a solution to a persistent problem afflicting television reporters.

One News
glamour boys Jack Tame and Matt McLean are among the many young TV journalists
who seem incapable of telling a story without making extravagant physical
gestures to emphasise their point.

An even worse offender is
Breakfast weather presenter Sam Wallace, who waves his arms around as if he
were participating in a demented game of charades.

Having observed them closely,
I have concluded they suffer from a disorder known as tardive dyskinesia. A
common side-effect of anti-psychotic medication, this condition results in
repetitive, involuntary body movements and is often seen in psychiatric
patients.

Whatever drugs TVNZ is giving
them, I suggest the treatment be discontinued immediately.

4 comments:

You are a tad selective in your criticism of reporters' gestures. Add presenters into the mix, a la John Campbell, who looks like his shirt sleeves have ridden up his arms, and he's trying to shake them down again. Very much a BBC TV physical affectation also.

A passable Allblack halfback, (forgive the pun) a forgettable broadcaster. His best interview was with Bob Jones. Bob was at his unrelenting best. He exposed Chris in the first 30 seconds of his interview as the weak broadcaster that he was, and then proceeded to trample over his preconceptions for the remainder of the interview.

I listened to it as we wound up the Takaka hill on the way back to Christchurch. It not only helped to make the journey enjoyable but reminded me of how much Radio NZ has failed to deliver a balanced perspective on life and politics in its weekend line up.

I am amazed that Chris Laidlaw is finally leaving RNZ, I thought that they had their jobs for life-they certainly act as if they do. I long ago gave up listening as he selected his interviewees and then gave them nice soft questions that made sure that their replies were just as he wanted them to be. I complained but never had reply of course.I heard the first part of his interview with Brian Gould as I quickly moved to another station-I thought that they would go well together!The gestures that TV 'personalities' make had always annoyed me - Duncan Garner being one of the worst but apparenly that is the way that they are taught and I don't expect it to end anytime soon.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.